“Noooo.” Her eyes narrowed. She stuck her chin out, like a boxer luring her opponent in for a punch. “Did you just look at him?” Ines put her hands over Sammy’s ears. “Did you just check in? Are you worried massah might think you gettin’ uppity?”
Before Ines, he had never known how much some black people talked about race. He told her on several occasions that he’d fought side by side and trusted his life with whites; even using the word in that context sounded strange to him. “All white people aren’t bad. Sammy is a kid.” A white couple passed with a stroller, speeding up to put distance between them.
“All white people aren’t bad? Is that a proverb? You’re like a bad fortune cookie. I’m not talking about all white people. I’m talking about right here, right now. Being a young black man without a father, Sammy doesn’t need some half-drunk trailer-park trash calling him son. Your jokes are fine, but the world is not the suburb you grew up in. The same cop calling him ‘son’ will be the first to draw his gun when Sammy is eighteen and makes a wrong turn. He has to learn now, or be shocked later. He’s not the sarcastic type. He doesn’t have your sense of humor.”
At least he had a sense of humor now. Earlier she accused him of hiding behind deep irony and fake disaffection, whatever that meant. She had been snippy ever since leaving Nola. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”
“Okay.” She sighed.
He sighed.
“So, we’re supposed to forget? We’re supposed to forget because they don’t mean anything by it, and all white people aren’t bad? Look around, that’s all I’m saying. On the job, in the stores, everywhere. We’re followed by clerks while some white kid is the one shoplifting; we’re pulled over by the police while some white kid whistles by with a trunk full of guns, planning to shoot up his school. Character assassinations against black athletes while corporate criminals bilk investors out of millions. And you say they’re not all bad, but racism is the bus that runs us over, every day, and while maybe only the racists are driving, every white is along for the ride: every one that makes more for the same job, that gets called in for an interview when Ashante doesn’t, every one that then moves to a better neighborhood, sends their kids to better schools, then to colleges, then their kids get called in for an interview when Ashante Jr. does not. They’re not all bad, but they’re a hell of a lot luckier. And you want Sammy to forget, to go back to that white boarding school thinking there’s something wrong with him because he isn’t treated like the other kids. Or complain and be told it’s in his head—Race doesn’t matter. We’re all the same and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“He offered Sammy a free round.”
“That’s white nice. They double-charge you, then give you a discount. They take your land, then offer you a reservation. They enslave you, then emancipate you.”
What about his parents, and everything they had done for him after he was abandoned by his people? They weren’t riding a “racist” bus. Wages was scraping by, just like Achilles’s parents had. After the factory burned down, Achilles’s father took a job at the school as a football coach. His mother worked part-time as a bookkeeper at the mill, which employed blacks in both the factory and the yard. If only Ines could meet his mom, she’d understand there was no bus bursting with white people careening down the road, taking out black pedestrians. The image was upsetting, the suggestion ludicrous. Ines made it sound like white people had it easier just because they were white. Achilles knew better. He knew a lot of white people, and none of them had ever mentioned this privilege to him. Being white wasn’t keeping down the rising property taxes his mom paid because of all the rich people moving in from DC. And, things were getting better; he’d heard that Illinois elected the fifth black senator in U.S. history. Besides, people shouldn’t name kids Ashante, not if they wanted them to get jobs.
They walked toward the truck, Ines storm troopering ahead. Cars swooshed down Buford Highway, dashing between the ethnic restaurants that dotted this area of the city.
Sammy asked, “Are we leaving already?”
Achilles and Ines looked down at Sammy, then up at each other. “No.”
As they walked back toward the spinning lights, Marcus called. Achilles ignored it, turning his phone off for the rest of the time they were at the carnival. On the way out of the parking lot, they saw the barker taking a smoke break. Achilles waved some money at him. When he came over, Achilles slammed the door into him and punched him three times in the nose, stopping only because he heard it crack.
Getting back into the truck, he said, “He won’t be driving any more buses.”
Except for Sammy saying “Cool!” and Ines shushing him, they rode back to the hotel in silence.
Over the next couple of days, Ines was glued to the tube. “Flak jacket, babe,” he would say, hoping to get her away from the television. His comment was not well received. Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, had issued a mandatory evacuation. While Ines cursed at the TV, Sammy was unaffected by the news coverage, moping around and asking to go outside. Broken levees and stranded citizens meant nothing to him. At one point, he saw a floating car and yelled, “Cool!” That was the extent of his interest.
The three of them were piled on the bed, picking at the pizza they’d ordered for breakfast, when Marcus called again, prompting Achilles to claim he had to run a quick errand, and to see a few of the fellows before they left town.
“Take Sammy,” she said.
On the way to Grady, Achilles dropped Sammy off with Wexler. At the morgue, Achilles followed Marcus back into the cooler. The unclaimed child was still in the walk-in, next to another gurney. “Still no kin. He’ll be cremated soon.” Marcus pulled back the sheet on the other gurney. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Achilles stepped closer to the body. Multiple blunt force traumas, abrasions on the upper-right forehead, abrasions on the lower-right forehead above the eyebrow, multiple contusions on the right cheek and lower nose, back of head. Abrasions on his chest, lower coastal margin. Contusions on the left arm, elbow, forearm, wrist, upper inner arm. Contusions and abrasions on the right elbow, foot, toes; hemorrhage on the rib area and leg. The left temple was concave, skull flattened, as if he had been struck with a brick or another heavy, blunt object. Eyes swollen, lips cracked. Teeth knocked out. Finger pads filed down. Deep fissures ran up the cheeks.
A sheet attached to the gurney detailed the injuries. “Bone fractures, rib fractures, contusions on midabdomen, back, and buttocks extending to the left flank, abrasions, lateral cuts on buttocks. Contusions on back of legs and knees, abrasions on knees, left fingers, and encircling to left wrist. Lacerations, right forth and fifth fingers. Blunt force injuries, predominately recent contusions on torso and lower extremities.”
Achilles looked again. The mole on his right cheek was lost in the bruises. The shoulders were broad enough, reaching almost to the edges of the gurney. There were faint lines across his cheeks. He was thin, almost as thin as Wexler. Almost as thin as he had been after jump school. He was rawboned in the face and shoulders, the skin stretched tight over the large jaw and cheekbones and oddly protruded shoulder, the skin appearing borrowed and two sizes too small for his frame.
Through all the bruises, Achilles couldn’t make out the cut under his eye sustained when they wrestled Josh; the scar on his neck that their mother’s cat gave him one of the many times they teased it and forced it into the house, where it would get in trouble; the V-shaped scar from the minefield, his only war injury. Achilles lifted the hand — the birthday scar on the palm was there, as was the scar above his eye where the pellet caught him after he shot the rock. There was the cut on his bicep from the water tower ladder. Achilles touched his face, cold and firm. The skin didn’t spring back, remaining depressed as if still bearing the weight of Achilles’s touch. One tear landed on Troy’s chin. Not now! Achilles held his breath; that tear was all he would allow himself. His brother was a hero. He went into a minefield after Wexler. Troy wasn’t reckless. He was brave. He was here, and must be avenged before being mourned. As Merriweather would say, “We don’t get down, we get even.”